Archive for the ‘Photographs’ Tag

With thanks, as ever, to the Rose Theatre in Angel Manor for the ability to borrow their lavish halls.

We thought long on this one, considering last year’s performance, and whether we could pull off the publicity factor this year. But finally, tradition won out, and so the time has come once again. The Flickr group is open for submissions of your finest evening gown photos. Who will be the best-dressed avatar on the Hollywood red carpet when the Academy Awards are handed out? Around the Grid is accepting submissions for its 9th Annual Oscar Fashion Photo Contest!!

The contest group will open for submissions once this article is published, and the prize pool has been placed in escrow (so to speak). Time to talk to your stylists, find your hairdresser and book an appointment, call in favors at the jewelry stores, and decide what you would wear if you became a nominee for the little gold man. For those considered outstanding in their evening couture and artistic portrayal, there shall be (15 minutes of) fame, (a bit of) fortune, and hopefully fun in playing the game.

Entry is free; just submit a photo to the appropriate group on Flickr, or leave a comment with a link to your photo. (However, make sure to read all the rules, okay?) The prize pool is again guaranteed at over L$50,000. First place will receive L$25,000. So, if you want a chance at filling your virtual closet at my expense, come on and enter!

Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. All rights to featured images are reserved to the artists under appropriate copyright laws and/or allowances under the Creative Commons. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog or Flickr page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, (as well as comments here).

Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, or leave a comment below.

NOTICE: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.

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Here is a pair of lovely photos from Trinana Peach on a common theme (and in a common gown).

Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. All rights to featured images are reserved to the artists under appropriate copyright laws and/or allowances under the Creative Commons. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog or Flickr page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, (as well as comments here).

Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, or leave a comment below.

NOTICE: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.

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Copyright 2017 by Coqueta Georgia; all rights reserved.

This photo by Coqueta Georgia captures a moment of action wonderfully; the archer defends herself despite a moment of surprise, getting an arrow off just seconds before the swordsman gets within his own range. Whether or not the shot is successful is up to you to decide….

Jem sent me some photos she’d squeezed in recently, but didn’t have the chance to write up. As it happened, I’d recently re-read Norman Spinrad’s Child of Fortune, which I recommend to you at some point; and the size of some of the flowers in LEA15’s Gardens By the Bay reminded me of that book. If you don’t get the context of the quotations, I suggest you buy the book. It is fun, it is erotic, and it will make you think about what our society could be like if we tried out the social philosophy of Sunshine’s Second Starfaring Age.

Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds. All rights to featured images are reserved to the artists under appropriate copyright laws and/or allowances under the Creative Commons. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog or Flickr page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, (as well as comments here).

Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com, or leave a comment below.

NOTICE: Some of the photos/links may contain nudity. Viewer discretion advised.

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We’re reasonably open to suggestions here, as I mention above, for photographers to include in Contact Sheet. I listen to my colleagues from around Second Life as well (witness Cajsa Lilliehook’s article that led me to my last column, on Magda Schmidtzau), and my co-bloggers on AtG. It was Jemmy who dropped a Flickr stream link on me for this artist. enna exonar hits my love of the Andrew Wyeth æsthetic frequently (though not constantly) in her photos: minimal and distilled. Her published body of work is small currently — one page of Flickr stream — but it is excellent.

new home_002

This captures a sense of loneliness quite nicely, with a brutal starkness that makes you ache a little in sympathy. Nothing is here but the model, the tree and some beach grasses, aside from the single spray of flowers. Empty sky and a sun shining in on the model from ahead of her drives the point home; but the flowers could symbolize the hope that someone will come to fill that empty void of sky in her future.

cloudy beach

A similar aloneness is found in this beach scene, again with the model gazing out into the distance near what looks to be a shore-based navigation light. There is no relief to this loneliness, though; the small, hopeful spray of blooms is absent here. All that is present is the woman looking for something or someone that has disappeared, the wash of the sea, and the flight of seabirds that could be either coming or going.

enna explores: dusty day

I added this photo in larger to allow you to see the detail. (As always, click on the photos to visit the artist’s pages and leave comments.) enna likes this piece of land with its windshaped trees, and those trees, along with the lighting, made me thing of the paintings and engraving of Gustave Doré. Some of his better work has trees like this that make you think of ents or other tree-beings, bending over and getting ready to stride off into the distance.

The last three are profile shots of enna herself; and there’s no extraordinary reason why I selected these, other than I simply love them. She captures the image of herself almost perfectly.

Like this:

“…All flesh is grass, and all its glory is like the flowers of the field….” — Isaiah 40:6

And this, of course, is the flip side of Mardi Gras — Shrove Tuesday, in places that observe the liturgical calendar originally put forth by the Catholic Church, was a time to clear your house and life of rich and good things before the penitential season of Lent. Mardi Gras and Carnival celebrations derive from this, as a last night of revelry, of getting the anarchy out of your system before buckling down to the forty days of penitence and meditation leading up to Easter.

That was yesterday; it’s now time to embark on a most spiritual journey. As I have written Ariel Sherman in my stories, she grew up on a planet with a state, conservative-Christian-oriented religion, but was never much of an adherent to it. After her soon-to-be husband freed her from the pleasure house where she had been converted into a cyborg, she adopted his Anglican-inspired faith (St. Michael’s Cathedral, Vidran, planet Videra, in the Anglican Communion of the Human Diaspora — thank you, David Weber). For Ariel and Adam, this would be Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

Bienvenue sur le Rue Bourbon, dans le ville de La Nouvelle-Orléans! At this time of year, the biggest parties of the world are held in Mobile, Rio de Janiero, the Caribbean islands, and especially to American minds, in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras provides the traditional closeout to the church calendar season of Epiphany. Jem and I took it a little farther than short tops and tons of beads this year; it looks like we should be on a float for one of the famous Crewes!

And no, Peter Minuet, we won’t flash you our boobs for beads. (Laughing)

Second Life® with Harper, Conan, Jem, Diana and Morgan

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Around the Grid is willing to provide unbiased and unreserved reviews of Resident-created and -sold, non-pornographic products, especially fashion and hairstyles, and of Real World books on Second Life. Submissions for review should be sent in world to Harper Ganesvoort.

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